> Remember trying to take notes while listening to a lecturer? Always
> 'miles behind' because of trying to form letters and spell!

That's what shorthand is for. (Myself, I have played with making lecture
notes in an IPA-based scrawl.)

The reason English is interesting to learn is not any fundamental property
of English, more that there is a huge amount of _written_ information and
literate people, in English. Changing English orthography would break
that. We might as well all start using Esperanto instead.